In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine posted today, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) edges toward endorsing the congressional proposal to create a “truth and reconciliation commission” that would investigate a panoply of misdeeds perpetrated during the Bush years.
When interviewer Tim Dickinson asked if Pelosi could “foresee a scenario in which senior members of the Bush administration are actually prosecuted,” she replied:
I think so. The American people deserve answers. Where we are now, in terms of prosecution of White House staff, is that we have charged them with contempt of Congress. We’re talking about Harriet Miers, Josh Bolten and Karl Rove. The natural course of events from here is that the speaker will determine what charge we’re going to pursue, because there are more than one. Under Bush, the Justice Department told the U.S. attorney not to prosecute the case. So the beat goes on — it just gets worse. We don’t know what will happen, because they’ve delayed it a long time.
Since being named our Sleeper Bill of the Month six weeks ago, the commission proposal has taken off in a big way. Still, Pelosi notably confined her promised action to the U.S. attorney firings scandal, which has prompted an ongoing contempt-of-Congress tussle with former Bush aides Karl Rove and Harriet Miers.
When Dickinson pressed about abuses of power perpetrated out of the Pentagon rather than the Justice Department, Pelosi demurred:
I didn’t like [the Bush administration’s] policies, which is why we needed to win the election — to get them out of power. But I don’t know what the evidence is against them on any specific charge. When you have a truth-and-reconciliation commission . . . look, I’m still fighting the bombing of Cambodia. I still have my gripes with the administration that bombed Cambodia before you were born, so I think it’s important to bring these things out. If you have a case against someone, you bring a case.
…
We should have full examination, I’m not denying that. You asked me a specific question: “Should they be charged?” I think that further information might take us to that place, but what we want to do is unify the American people. … What Mr. Leahy is putting forward, in terms of a truth-and-reconciliation commission, has always been helpful. It was helpful in South Africa, it was helpful in Rwanda, and they were talking about doing it in places like Lebanon. Unfortunately, only the Congress can be responsible for preserving our constitutional prerogatives — that we get information from the executive branch when we ask for it, that members of the administration appear before us when they are called to the Congress.
Sounds like a Democratic leader pulled in two directions on this question.
